The tin man statue cannot come alive.

This was what Derek thought to himself. He was sitting in the lobby of the movie theatre he worked at. The tin man statue was set up on a wide, maroon stand, complete with a barrier made of pine to deter, Derek assumed, people from reaching out to touch the man’s ankles.

In fact, he hadn’t noticed the tin man before. He had worked there for well over a year but, for some reason, had never spotted it; had never paid enough attention to the decor, he supposed—feeling daft—and it had always escaped him.

Now he noticed it.

The tin man statue cannot come alive, he repeated to himself, and it was all the fault of a podcast: one his friends/coworkers had made where they talked about working at the movie theatre—(told stories about it; odd things they had seen; experiences)—and had brought up the tin man right off the bat.

Sometimes they had been messing around, joking about it, and then glancing at it, and they swore…swore…its head had turned. They swore it was in a little bit of a different position than it had been before.

So now Derek had listened to this podcast. Now the tin man was on his mind. He saw it. He observed. The face was lifelike, Derek had discovered when he went near it. He was posed, ready, in some kind of action motion. Over his shoulder he was holding an axe.

Derek was working alone. He didn’t want to approach it. He had gone near it once just to check it out and it had freaked him out. It had actually made him worried.

You mess with something too much, Derek thought, mess with an idea too much, the eerie too much, and it feels it…. The eerie does…feels you messing with it.

Stances change. Positions of the body alter. Heads flicker—then they’re tilted different; then their attention is turned. It knows you’re thinking about it. It knows.

The whole lobby switches under these new interrogating thoughts. Transforms—

Cathexis on a statue. Listening acutely for unfamiliar sounds pulsing in the distance, and what is that…? What is—

Not understanding anything of one’s surroundings. 

It makes me want to change my schedule, Derek thought in frustration, sitting at a high table, looking down at his own fists resting on the mottled brown wood surface. Makes me want to tell them I can only work days.

He imagined saying it.

“I can only work days.”

(The tin man statue cannot)

I can’t do these nights.

I have to get out of here, he thought, running his hands against his face nervously, pointlessly. 

The tin man stat—

I can’t be around that thing.

Taylor Napolsky’s work has appeared in MORIA, Maudlin House and other places. Visit online at taylornapolsky.com

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